Category Archives: Teachings

Song to the Spirit of Life

March 8, 2019 Mugo 7 Comments

The Buddhist scriptures describe experience, profound religious understandings. Each day we sing/recite many of them central to the teachings of Zen. They are configured in poetic form. I remember somebody saying that the scriptures were written at deaths door. Meaning for me that the understanding contained in them was hard-won, that’s the absolute allowing of the dropping away of the illusion of an enduring separate selfhood. In effect to die while still alive.

These days and months I seem to be ‘tuning into’ what that all means for me personally. The dropping away, it’s not an option or anything to do with virtue. I’ve had contact with many who find themselves in extremity and see them ‘drop away’. In some cases there is no choice, the extremity leaves no choice. The following was written by a devoted Christian person early on in his diagnosis of ALS – Lou Gehrig’s disease

Read/sing lest we forget the depths of our being. Yes, the language is theistic, the sentiments universal.

Spirit of Life, remind me
to listen to the sound
of your whispered voice
and to feel your presence in my soul.

Calm my mind
so that I might hear
the gentle melody of life
that murmurs beneath my busy thoughts.

Help me be still
and quiet, desiring nothing
but acceptance of your will
and understanding of your purpose.

Please give me this gift
of peace each day
so that I never forget
to love my life and to share that love.

You are always with me,
The strength, the light and the joy of my being.
Lessons of ALS – Facebook

The merit of this post is offered to all those who face, live with and struggle to accept the day-to-day realities of ALS and similar conditions of the nervous system. One cannot even imagine. The chap who wrote Lessons of ALS as his condition progressed was eloquent on the whole matter of mortality. Not to mention his describing what it feels like to lose the use of ones body and retain ones mind.

Daily Life, Overcome Difficulties, Teachings

The Buddhas Renunciation – Dharma Talk

February 9, 2019 Mugo 3 Comments

I don’t do well with the word ‘renunciation’, not one I’d apply to myself i.e. that I renounced (rejected) the life I was living in the ‘world’ and became a monk because…? Nope. (Renunciation – Meaning, refraining from, going without, doing without, giving up of, eschewe, rejection of.) Well yes, there is a good bit of doing without and refraining from as a monk, however for me talking this path, all those years ago, was and still is, about embracing, acknowledging what’s fundamentally here and now. Embracing all of existence, oneself included. Ideas of having and not having, fall away. Or rather the clinging to having and not having.

Last Sunday we celebrated the Festival of the Buddhas Renunciation. This, the renunciation, is pointing to the time the historic Buddha took off to live as a wandering ascetic. Rev. Vivian, a visiting monk from Shasta Abbey gave the Dharma talk. She points out at around the 8.38 minute the sort of question people pose themselves. Imagining, for example, that to do this Buddhist practice seriously you have to leave everyday life (practicing as a lay person) and ordain as a monk. This is mistaken thinking, really it is. She talks about making those big decisions such as ordaining and what can influence/drive them for example. Not the little decisions like what kind of mattress to buy or where to go on your holidays, more the biggies, life changing ones. So when you have a moment listen to this talk.

This talk explores the Buddha’s Renunciation in light of what it might offer us in our practice today when we find ourselves making difficult choices, and what that implies about the true meaning of Renunciation.
Bowing to The Great Unborn, Dharma Talk by Rev. Vivian.

Anyway, that’s enough for this evening.

Information, Overcome Difficulties, Teachings

Near Death

February 5, 2019 Mugo 3 Comments

There isn’t a day goes by when I am not in touch with somebody who is dealing with a life close to ending. Or a death approaching, soon or predictably – quite a bit later. The usual measure of time doesn’t seem to come into it – a moment can seem like a life time. Hours slip by in a blink of an eye. My own father died January 29th 2000, quite suddenly and without warning, although he was elderly he was fit and well by all appearance. Nineteen year ago. He is long gone…and yet… Still close.

I see friends and family struggle with the loss of a loved one…and I’ve stayed silent about my experience. While nothing but time can alleviate the pain of loss, I can’t help but feel that as a card-carrying member of this exclusive club ( near death survivor), I have inside knowledge that might alleviate a different kind of pain — the pain of imagining the final moments, what might have been going through their minds, and whether they made it to the other side in peace.

Christen O’Brien – Medium

The above quote is from a piece by a person who experienced near death, and survived. This is not rare.

This post is for all those who grieve a loss and specifically for Norman and for Rachel. And for Kate S too. And so many more.

Daily Life, photograph, Teachings

CRASH!

January 29, 2019 Mugo 8 Comments

Light goes with darkness as the sequence does of steps in walking.

At the end of the first meditation period of the day a drum is struck seven times, symbolizing the coming of the ~~seven~~ *six Buddhas before the historic Buddha, Shakyamuni. We use a bass drum mounted on a stand. Depending on how and where on the surface of the drum it is struck the sound is anything from a resounding CRASH to a mild thump. The intention is for a deep resonating sound, neither too loud nor too soft. Yesterday, more of a crash! It happens.

And so it is with us. Actions, including speech are, at times, harsh and jarring, at other times filled with compassion and gentleness. Resonating deeply in minds and hearts. It is all too easy however to label a person ‘harsh’ or ‘compassionate’ and evaluate that person accordingly good or bad, nice or nasty on the basis of their actions. Or the quality of their actions.

Is this right though? However human it may be to judge in this way I’d be rather sad if, for example, what I said or did even years ago had me for ever cast as a ‘nasty person’. The act may not have been out of the top drawer, raising my voice for example, but does that make me a nasty person, an unkind person? Is it possible to see the person apart from their actions? At least as a starting point for exercising kindness and compassion.

In ‘darkness’, when separate features do not stand out, is used in our end of Buddhism to mean emptiness and ‘light’ to mean multiplicity. You could say also; one and different, empty and full. The two seeming opposites fit together, are together ‘as a box all with it’s lid’, to quote from one of our scriptures.

What this means to me at least is, wether or not we beat the drum with a crash, a subtle tap, or an unthoughtful wallop there is a leap of faith needed. Faith that takes one past the reasonable and the reasoned, the right and the wrong, while at the same time acting or not acting – what ever is called for. This is the koan of daily life arising naturally. This is not easy. Nothing and nobody is ever all light or all dark although we can forgive ourselves for believing this to be so!

Thanks to Mark for the photograph. The Alhambra in Spain, I think?

*See comments

Teachings

Mary Oliver – Great Woman

January 17, 2019 Mugo 3 Comments

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver (b. September 10, 1935 d. January 17, 2018)

You can listen to Mary Oliver reading the above poem, Wild Geese, in this article in Brain Pickings.

‘The world offers itself to your imagination….’ Ah yes indeed.

Jade Mountains Buddha Hall